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France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

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Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#391

Post by mcpackieh »

koonsolo wrote: post #376
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They can locate anyone's phone on demand. The services that do this can generate a likely street address from GPS or tower triangulated location. This is how many criminals now get caught while on the run. It isn't magic police work but rather the personal tracking device everyone carries. Likewise some spree killers have been tracked down by geofencing phones known to be around all crime scenes and zeroing in on…

Cell phones are only connected to 1 tower afaik. So no triangulation is possible, only the tower they are connected to, which is very broad.

That's not accurate; they get angle and time (distance) from the tower. It's a hell of a lot more precise than a circle somewhere around the tower.

https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2020/12/5g-positioning--wha...

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#392

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

koonsolo wrote: post #376
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They can locate anyone's phone on demand. The services that do this can generate a likely street address from GPS or tower triangulated location. This is how many criminals now get caught while on the run. It isn't magic police work but rather the personal tracking device everyone carries. Likewise some spree killers have been tracked down by geofencing phones known to be around all crime scenes and zeroing in on…

Cell phones are only connected to 1 tower afaik. So no triangulation is possible, only the tower they are connected to, which is very broad.

Other towers can still passively track your signal. You also have to communicate with more than one tower during handoff between cells. This is a capability mandated by E911.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1:

  To locate a mobile telephone geographically, there are two general approaches. One is to use some form of radiolocation from the cellular network; the other is to use a Global Positioning System receiver built into the phone itself. Both approaches are described by the Radio resource location services protocol (LCS protocol).

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#393

Post by JulesRosser »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #190
px43 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Pixel phone probably gives you the best chance of resisting this sort of attack. The most vulnerable phones are the older, cheaper phones that run outdated versions of Android. Pixel phones are generally the first to get security updates, and so the quickest to get patches when spyware companies start using new bugs.

Nexus/Pixel devices literally come out of the box with Verizon background crapware installed that you cannot disable or remove even if you're not a Verizon customer. Google long sold out, friend.

Weird, I have never seen carrier bloat on any Google phone (Nexus5...Pixel6A). Is this because of EU legislation?

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#394

Post by aio2 »

Awelton wrote: post #126

They could at least have the decency to just secretly do it and then pretend like they aren't, like our government does. This is why physical switches and removable batteries are the only way forward.

Gonna have to agree to disagree.

I feel it's significantly better to know that someone is doing the spying and all that. Why should they hide that they can spy on whoever they choose? When they don't make clear what happens, we end up in a position where everyone's uncertain. And, as history has shown, it makes things significantly more difficult.

There's no decency in that.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#395

Post by adamc »

fsflover wrote: post #332
adamc wrote: post #114

Just stop carrying your phone. Problem solved.

What if I need to call emergency?

Then you are out of luck, of course. I didn't claim it would be without drawbacks. But it's basically your only good recourse.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#396

Post by fsflover »

adamc wrote: post #395
fsflover wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I need to call emergency?

Then you are out of luck, of course. I didn't claim it would be without drawbacks. But it's basically your only good recourse.

It's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618432.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#397

Post by r00fus »

charles_f wrote: post #263
kemayo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the French Revolution was very-shortly-followed by the Terror, so we can hardly present this as a simple slow decline from a golden age.

The terror was fully part of the revolution, and was notably when the vote for France to proclame itself a Republic happened. Support for and against the king came and went throughout the revolution. The vote for abolition of monarchy in 92 (so, 3 years after it began!) and then for death penalty of the king in 93 was heavily influenced by the fear of retribution for whom may vote against. France would likely still b…

This entirely. The truth is messy and doesn’t make for an easy story.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#398

Post by skyyler »

rekoil wrote: post #386
PawgerZ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Y Combinator is an American company and the website is hosted in the US. What else would this imply?

I wrote a stupid message first that the person above you replied to accurately, I changed my stupid message to be less stupid while still reflecting my opinion on the matter.

Thank you for saying this so I don’t look insane, ahaha

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#399

Post by internetter »

MartijnBraam wrote: post #238
internetter wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this even need to be controlled with firmware? Can't it be a simple circuit? (I know nothing about this)

It could be simple, just hook the led to the reset line of the camera and you'll know if the camera is in use. Downside is that the led will blink on boot when linux probes the driver.

> Downside is that the led will blink on boot when linux probes the driver.

Sounds like an upside to me.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#400

Post by soared »

varispeed wrote: post #288
soared wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's already common to see criminals and dissidents get busted because they think that turning a phone off stops it from reporting location data. That’s an incredible claim to make with no source. It seems unreasonable to suspect Apple and google would allow some chips they don’t access to battery even when powered off.

Why would you have a source if the tech is "secret"?

Well if you can make claims without a source and say the tech is secret..you can claim literally anything? I have a startup that builds a machine that can complete medical tests from a single drop of blood. The tech is a secret though.
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